The coolest thing, I think, about Wasteland on Melrose (a little thrift store out in LA) is this story I stumbled across.
See, a failed teen singer by the name of Bonnie McKee ended up there years ago.
Her first album was a flop and she was eventually dropped from her record label. She ended up broke and addicted to drugs, but kept up with her songwriting.
One day, selling clothes at Wasteland, McKee met a fellow struggling singer – named Katy Perry.
A few years later when Perry was a celebrity, she was working on a new hit with Max Martin and Dr. Luke. They knew a song they had would work – they just didn’t have lyrics for it.
That’s when Katy Perry remembered her old friend.
After a number of attempts, and with everything on the line, McKee hit it out of the park and wrote Perry’s hit Teenage Dream.
“I finished it and I drove up the coast to Santa Barbara,” McKee says, “to pitch it to Luke and Max and Katy, and I got there and sang it and everyone was like, ‘Hell, yeah!” And I went to my hotel and got into the bathtub and I just cried and cried. I was just so relieved.” “Teenage Dream,” the second single from the album of the same name, went to number one and spent two weeks on top.
-John Seabrook, The Song Machine